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For Jitasa, accounting is more than just a business—it is a way to help the world be a better place. As the nation’s largest accounting and bookkeeping services provider focused exclusively on nonprofits, the firm is dedicated to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their clients. Fulfilling that mission means meeting their clients where they are, accommodating a wide range of financial practices and levels of sophistication.
Jitasa relies on technology to help them deliver results. As such, having the right tech stack is essential to improving the financial operations of their clients. We spoke with Brock Burgess, Managing Director of Client Services at Jitasa, and Alex Arbogast, Marketing Specialist at Jitasa, to learn how they leverage BILL to improve outcomes, for both their firm and for the nonprofit organizations they serve.
When Jitasa started with BILL in 2018, many of their clients were still using paper-based accounts payable processes, which were a massive pain point. By moving to BILL, they completely removed that challenge, increasing transparency and productivity.
Fast forward to 2024, and their biggest challenge has become training up new clients who are using a diverse array of AP and expense management methods. Some smaller nonprofits are still printing checks to make payments, while others are using whatever system their bank has in place, including sending wires or batching payments.
In terms of expense management, the big challenge within nonprofits is that they often work with non-employee volunteers who operate programs with limited oversight. Many nonprofits do not have good visibility into that spend.
“The biggest nightmare is probably organizations who use petty cash for expenses,” explains Burgess. “There's not a lot of good controls around handing cash to an individual.”
Not only is manual expense management opaque, it is also time consuming. “Many of our clients use spreadsheets that are sent back and forth for coding. It can take days while we are just waiting for the client to give feedback,” Burgess says.
“The biggest nightmare is probably organizations who use petty cash for expenses. There's not a lot of good controls around handing cash to an individual.”
Jitasa uses BILL Accounts Payable, BILL Accounts Receivable, and BILL Spend & Expense with their clients. As part of their offering, they dictate 95% of the technology that their clients use, which allows them to provide better service. With this approach to their tech stack, they can streamline employee training on a single platform. Approximately 80% of their clients are currently using a BILL product.
“When we implemented BILL back in 2018, we basically drew a line in the sand and said we're not going to support our clients on any other platform,” Burgess explains. “We can provide a much better service to them with BILL.”
“When we implemented BILL back in 2018, we basically drew a line in the sand and said we're not going to support our clients on any other platform. We can provide a much better service to them with BILL.”
With BILL Spend & Expense, the firm does not necessarily mandate its use, but they do explain the benefits during onboarding. With BILL, their clients are able to see every charge and create virtual cards.
“Once clients complete the initial implementation of BILL Spend & Expense—the new workflows that come with the expense cards as opposed to normal credit cards—we found that they absolutely love it,” Arbogast says.
“Once clients complete the initial implementation of BILL Spend & Expense—the new workflows that come with the expense cards as opposed to normal credit cards—we found that they absolutely love it.”
BILL automation and digitization have transformed Jitasa’s financial operations to create a more nimble, flexible firm. In addition to the day-to-day efficiencies, BILL Accounts Payable has helped them develop a better staffing model.
“By automating the AP process with BILL, we've been able to focus on developing our employees,” Burgess says. Part of that effort is the firm’s distributed staffing model, which was enabled by BILL. During the pandemic, they were able to seamlessly service clients without interruption.
After implementing BILL in 2018, the firm performed an extensive business case study of BILL Accounts Payable. “We basically did a risk analysis for dictating BILL to our clients. We wanted to determine if we were going to lose any revenue,” explains Burgess. “From a cost perspective, we achieved a 20% gross margin gain within the AP process by implementing BILL Accounts Payable.”
“From a cost perspective, we achieved a 20% gross margin gain within the AP process by implementing BILL Accounts Payable.”
BILL Spend & Expense, a more recent addition, has improved efficiency and found time savings.
“Once a client is on BILL Spend & Expense, it speeds up the reconciliation of expenses by not having to wait on them to get the coding back,” says Burgess. “BILL provides us with almost real-time financial reporting.”
“Once a client is on BILL Spend & Expense, it speeds up the reconciliation of expenses by not having to wait on them to get the coding back. BILL provides us with almost real time financial reporting.”
BILL Spend & Expense saves the firm three to five hours a week in processing time per client. “We don’t have to wait for expenses to be coded in a worksheet, waiting for the client to review, and then getting it back and implementing it into QuickBooks,” says Arbogast.
Auditing services are also much easier with BILL. “A decent chunk of the auditing process is looking at cash disbursements, making sure you have documentation to satisfy an organization's bylaws,” Burgess explains. “Now, that's all automated and housed in one platform with BILL. It saves a lot of time and shows clients that you're on top of things.”
“Now, that's all automated and housed in one platform with BILL. It saves a lot of time and shows clients that you're on top of things.”
Nonprofits often have a unique set of challenges, and Burgess finds that BILL Accounts Payable is a great fit. BILL helps Jitasa ensure that their clients do not overdraw their bank accounts, helps them plan ahead, and actively ensures that these organizations are sustainable financially.
“Nonprofits are often actively managing cash flow, and the visibility of BILL allows them to quickly compare what’s in their bank account with spending,” he says. “BILL enables them to really tightly manage cash flow, which in turn drives better business decisions.”
From an expense management perspective, a major challenge for nonprofits is running programs and events. BILL Spend & Expense helps them control the spend for those and gives them instant 100% visibility.
Clients can create virtual credit cards and set a hard budget for volunteers wherever they are operating, in another state or another country. The individual associated with a BILL card can code all the transactions and sync to QuickBooks. That streamlines the information gathering process and enables clients to make business decisions faster.
With BILL Accounts Payable and BILL Spend & Expense, information seamlessly flows into QuickBooks. “Once we get them set up and on their way, they understand everything as part of a single budget,” Burgess says.
For Jitasa, the individual tools within the BILL platform all ladder up to the benefits of having one unified experience. By using BILL for both AP and expense management, they have a single point of contact. “We don't have to worry about going to different places to get things done,” says Burgess. “You don't have to log into 18 different platforms to get a holistic view of cash flow. There are transparency benefits with BILL.”
With BILL, Jitasa has the right technology in place to help their nonprofit clients with any challenge, no matter how big or how small.
1 Card issued by Cross River Bank, member FDIC.
